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On account of semi-comatose stints by the wood burner, brought on by the repeated appearance of a family-sized tub of Rodda’s and vats of egg nog, this video of Montol is going out a week late.
As in previous years, it was a suitably elemental, quirky affair up on the beacon: full moon; big fire; masked people; music in a minor key; person dressed in horse skull.
And with it belated happy festivities from pasties & cream!
They were sounding so chirpy on Radio Cornwall about the lunar eclipse this morning – the first total lunar eclipse to take place on the winter solstice since 1638 – that I felt spurred to get out of bed and try and catch it. It was cold and I couldn’t see no bleddy moon but it was an incredible sunrise all the same. Anyone else have any lunar joy?
Today is of course the shortest day of the year and in Penzance that means everyone goes a bit pagan and marches up to the beacon with lanterns to stand around a large bonfire and sing. Montol as a festival was revived here four years ago – it’s devoid of bells and whistles (burger vans, candyfloss etc), but I think that’s the idea. Procession starts from St John’s Hall at 5.45pm this evening.
More deets at http://www.montol.co.uk/
I breathed a huge sigh of relief when it emerged that the Acorn Arts Centre building had been ‘saved’. The venue as we knew it has closed for now – it’s looking sorry for itself – but the trustees are currently in discussion about how to secure the Acorn’s future and, crucially, how to make it more financially viable. After the Poly’s rebirth in Falmouth, I feel more hopeful!
I was a regular at the Acorn before it closed – in the past few years I’ve seen the Portico Quartet twice, Brother & Bones, Hedluv & Passman at the cabaret, Mark Steel is in Town, Patrick Gale giving a talk, singer-songwriter Jenny Bishop, superb comedians Robin Ince and Dan Antopolski – so I feel quite alarmed at the thought of west Cornwall without this intimate cultural venue, the only dedicated arts centre in the far west.
Rightly, the trustees are keen to find a formula for the Acorn that makes it financially sustainable, and to that end they are seeking the opinions of their audience. My god, I couldn’t click on the link to the online survey quick enough!
“Question 2. The Acorn has presented a varied programme of professional theatre in the past five years but I would have preferred a more popularist/entertainment programme.” STRONGLY DISAGREE!
Please not another Hall for Cornwall-type programme of expensive, mainstream acts. I know it’s all very well me throwing my hands up in horror but they must of course find a way to make money – maybe the key is in making the atmospheric basement bar into a standalone arty bar-bistro? I’ve happily sustained a number of San Miguel hangovers after drinking in there.
Be sure to have your say by clicking here (it only takes a few minutes).
Some one-off performances are taking place and Miracle Theatre’s ‘Beauty and the Beast from Mars’ is playing the Acorn tonight, Wednesday 15 December, and Thursday 16 December at 7.30pm; call 01872 262466 or book online at http://www.miracletheatre.co.uk
Fruity ciders seem to be all the rage round here at the mo, which is fine by me, even if I tend to think of them as a one-drink novelty. A bit like that lovely German cherry beer Kriek. But I just discovered one that I’d be delighted to drink all night long… you know, should the opportunity arise.
The spanking new Cornish Pink from Polgoon comes in girly, pink, alcopoppy bottles but the label belies some classy bubbles inside. Not too fizzy and carbonated, it’s a very smooth ride. £2.50 a bottle in a deli near you.
I know everyone else in the country (even the county) has been knee-deep in the stuff for days but when it snows in Penzance, it’s a big deal.
If we get a dusting, there are squeals of delight (from adults), so waking up to a full inch today – the sort of depth where you start to get that satisfying creaking under foot – has everyone out with their cameras on the prom. Including me.
Everything has ground to a halt, naturally. And since it’s snowing, we’re all listening to Radio Dreckly… ‘ere, 18 inches of the stuff out Land’s End way so I hear. Would love to see some pictures of Sennen, anyone?
‘I just love cheese,’ said Helen Venning, the owner of a new cheese shop in Newlyn, to the Cornishman last week. I liked the simplicity of that statement. And, seeing as I just love cheese too, I went down for the opening night on Friday to check out their wares.
Newlyn Cheese – a few doors down from Jelberts – is aiming to have the largest selection of British cheeses in Cornwall, including the phenomenal Rachel from Somerset and all the Cornish crew.
Cornwall has some excellent cheeses – Manallack Farmhouse, yarg, Cornish Blue, Cornish Camembert – but when it comes to stinkiness you Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve got a bit of a thing at the moment for monterey pines (see also banner pic!), so here is a quick vid of the fireworks on Friday going off behind the silhouette of a monterey pine in Penlee Park (aka the cheap seats).
Weird how I was just daydreaming the other day about a Cornish answer to the modernist-architecture-on-tableware company people will always need plates…
Well, check out this design in their 1930s Modernist Seaside Villas range, which features a very cool home on Lidden Road in Penzance called Acland House (architect Geoffrey Bazeley).
Struggling to believe I’d never noticed a house of this calibre, especially given my penchant for art deco, I trundled off to Lidden Road this morning to check it out. Here it is in real life – hardly changed in itself but now surrounded by equally large but less inspiring suburban-style houses.
Look here to see what it was like when it was first built on open land in 1936, probably with uninterrupted sea views… sigh…imagine that. Ah well, at least the mug is only a tenner.
I wonder if it’s the same architect as the Yacht Inn, which is in a similar style… does anyone know?
Mug £10, plate £25 – bone china. http://www.peoplewillalwaysneedplates.co.uk
Last week I was airing my concerns over Cornwall Council’s plans for Penzance harbour on pasties & cream. Well, on Friday I went to the public meeting in St John’s Hall called by the Friends of Penzance Harbour. My attendance of said meeting in a dusty town hall bang in the middle of Friday night is testament to my love of PZ’s waterfront!!
Turns out I was not alone – it was packed. It got quite heated in there – well, you know, as heated as things ever get in this mellow corner of the country, ie clapping, a few ‘hear, hears’ and a spot of hissing. There was an overwhelming sense of frustration and anger in the crowd about how the episode has been handled – one speaker even questioned whether the lack of public consultation flouted the Aarhus convention (the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters)… to much vigorous nodding.
I took a few short vids.
Here is one deceptively gently spoken speaker:
And the lone representative of Option A speaking:
Every few weeks, I escape the Metropolis on a Saturday morning and burn over to Higher Trenowin farm shop up on the scenic PZ-St Ives road.
It is an exemplary farm shop, as I was saying the other day, but to be honest I take almost any excuse to go for a drive that road – it climbs high out of Penzance and gives an instant feeling of space. There’s a excellent layby en route – here’s a very short vid from last weekend.
As a relatively new blogger, and not a political blogger at that, I have been tentative about wading into the shark-infested waters surrounding the proposed redevelopment of Penzance harbour on pasties & cream.
*braces self* As any Penwith resident will know, the so-called Option A, plans to redevelop large parts of the historic harbour wall and build a ferry terminal on Battery Rocks beach, has been the subject of very heated and embittered debate in Penzance over the past two years, creating the mother of all bad vibes.
At one point, shops were displaying their for or against poster in the window and in one drinking establishment, I even heard about an informal ‘don’t mention the harbour’ policy!
As you may have read, last week the Council waved through these controversial plans – despite the fact the only Penzance councillor on the committee voted against, despite the fact that English Heritage have upped the listed status of the harbour wall, despite the fact there are cheaper, less harmful alternatives on the table – and I feel I can contain my thoughts no longer.
In my humble opinion, there seem to be an array of Bloody Good Points to be made against Option A – all of which are expressed eloquently and reasonably on the Friends of Penzance Harbour website. But my instinctive objection is much simpler and less political.
For me, the aesthetic and historical value of Battery Rocks and the old harbour wall is priceless – and once it has disappeared under concrete and a noisy coach park, it will be lost forever.
Thinking about how best to go about this, my thorniest blog post yet, I decided that since so many words have already been written (even the national press and radio have got involved at various points), and since it is an exquisite blue-skied autumn day, I’d take my camera down to the area in question and photograph what is at stake. Here are the results:
I don’t know about you but I find the idea of losing these things really sad. I swim there in summer. I walk there most days. It’s got the best view in town of St Michael’s Mount.
If you also have an opinion about this either way (or even if you’re on the fence – there’s an ‘I don’t know’ option!), please vote in the online poll being run by the Cornishman this week – you don’t need to register and it takes a millisecond to click your vote.
And if you happen to feel the same way as me about it, you can also sign up for the Friends of Penzance Harbour email updates on ways to help – usually in the form of easy-to-send emails.
I was touched to receive an old, red Ward-Lock Guide to Penzance as a get-well present from my friend Sarah while recovering from surgery (I’ve started walking btw… like a duck, but you’ve got to start somewhere).
It’s hard to know exactly what date it was published as Ward-Locks apparently routinely omitted a date from all pages in order to look current but I’m guessing first half of 20th century… One can, should one not have a job, go on online forums where people endlessly discuss the possible publication dates of these old guides with impressive anality.
At the risk of romanticising my convalescence, which hasn’t been a walk in the park (literally no walks in the park!), I did indulge in several enjoyable afternoons of reading in the company of this book while watching the boats potter in and out of Newlyn harbour from my bedroom window and a) pondering how little Penzance had changed in the years that had passed since that book was written, and b) amusing myself with the things that had.
My top 10 highlights from the book:
1/ ‘Penzance is the metropolis of the toe of England – a town that has prospered amazingly considering its isolation for hundreds of years’.
–Come on, I don’t think the use of the M-word has ever been appropriate.
2/ ‘Penzance shops close at 1pm on Fridays. On other days between 5pm and 6pm. On market days, some shops remain open later.’ –Well, lucky old people of olden times. Can’t remember the last time I found a shop open a minute past 5.30pm.
3/ ‘To many the charm of the place, and the justification of a journey of some hundreds of miles, is simply that Penzance is–just Penzance.’
Lovely…
4/ ‘Mid-way along the seafront is the Pavilion Theatre, with a café and roof garden’
–ER, HELLO – PENZANCE HAD A SEAFRONT ROOF GARDEN? Who got rid of that and replaced with an amusement arcade?
5/ ‘Mousehole has no claim other than it is to-day as it was yesterday–an unsophisticated Cornish fishing village unreformed by artists and unspoiled by vandals.’
–Thankfully still unvandalised though I think a few artists might be ‘reforming’ it.
6/ ‘After reading the effusive descriptions of the beauty of Lamorna Cove, handed down from writers of the past, many visitors express disappointment when they reach this pretty but over-publicised spot–particularly when they have seen more beautiful coves. Nevertheless, Lamorna is… very fine in its own wild, untidy way but is unfortunate in possessing a beach consisting entirely of granite boulders’
–Ouch! Touch harsh on Lamorna.
7/ ‘What natural beauty Land’s End does possess is usually imperilled by the disgraceful amount of paper, cardboard and other debris of picnics cast aside by careless visitors’.
–Oh well, better that than the unmovable debris of a sizeable theme park, no?
8/ ‘One arrives at Porthmeor Beach, a fine sandy bay, splendid for surf-bathing’
–Surf-bathing?!
9/ ‘This peninsula combines the soft charms of a genial winter – and is, in fact, an invalid’s paradise, with a summer season of unvarying equability’.
–Looking forward to its soft charms again as winter draws in… is he talking about mizzle?
10/ ‘A century ago, the journey from London to West Cornwall occupied something like forty hours… The world-famous Cornish Riviera Limited now runs from London to Penzance in about 7 hours’
–Nice to see the coming of the 21st century has reduced the travel time by a whole hour. Maybe we’ll get it down to 4.5 hours by 2110.
I was horrified to read this week that Penzance came tenth in a survey looking into Britain’s worst clone towns, and charting the devastating rampage of the chains on this country’s high streets.
I have to admit I was also a little surprised. One of the things that draws a lot of us to this *faraway town (*swap in ‘godforsaken’ on a bad day), and Cornwall in general, is its strong sense of identity – a feeling of foreignness, community and all-round arty eccentricity.
While I’m not declaring myself above supermarket shopping, I am rather partial to a trundle around town (yes I have a shopping trolly and no, I don’t care if I look like a granny), buying my meat and sausages at the butchers, fish from Newlyn, eggs and cold meats from the deli, and all manner of goods by the side of the road. [I am yet to succumb to one of those wooden ducks that are always lined up in lay-bys in Cornwall – do people finally give in once they’ve lived here long enough?]
But let’s face up to facts: the chains – and really the most dire of chains – are all here. So, to cheer myself up, I’ve made a list of my top ten independent shops in Penzance (I’ve permitted Cornish mini chains!):
1/ Lavenders: eggs, cold meats & pasties
2/ The Deli: best coffee in town
3/ Lenterns: superb sausages and meat
4/ Stevo’s – fish boutique (Wharfside)
5/ Archie Browns – health shop and community hub
6/ Seasalt – organic Cornish clothing, though you have to go easy or you look like everyone else in Cornwall
7/ Steckfensters – second-hand emporium (I blogged about this the other day)
8/ Weigh Your Own Absolutely Anything on Causewayhead – not sure what it’s really called but they are shit-hot weighers
9/ Super Volt – the sort of passion for cables you want from your local electrics shop
10/ Books Plus – books & stationery, plus Cornwall section
There, I feel better now. It’s going to be OK. I mean I even had to miss lots out! Let me know if you agree with the lineup.
The good news is that Newlyn scored very highly in the same study for identity and diversity.
On Friday, I winched myself out of the house and down to the bench on Wherrytown Beach to spectate at the annual sea swim race from Newlyn to Battery Rocks. The conditions were ideal – one of those calm, blue late summer evenings that make you get all pretentious and emotional about the Cornish light.
Next to me on the bench was a friendly Newlyn octogenarian, who told me about how ‘when he was a lad’ – ie before the advent of ‘health and safety ‘n’ all that’ – the race started with a dive off Newlyn harbour wall. Wetsuit? ‘Naaaw.. wouldn’t have known the meaning of the word’. We are a bit soft these days, aren’t we? Not his 19-year-old granddaughter, though, who last weekend swam from the Brisons (rock a mile off Cape Cornwall, ie in the Atlantic Ocean) to shore. Hard. Core.
As you can see in the vid above (look for the moving dots), the pack spread out quickly, with the top ten looking impressively bullet-like and splash-free. It was an inspiring sight – it even made me harbour some ambitions, possibly fleeting, about entering next year. But the Brisons, never.
Click through for more pics. Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently we are to be showered with meteors tomorrow and Friday night. And Nasa’s star brains say it could be the most spectacular August “Perseids shower” in recent years, thanks to a dark moon and a clear forecast (see above for Penzance).
The National Trust’s page about it advises stargazers to “escape the city lights”. Ha ha, that should take all of about three minutes round here. I’ll be finding myself a suitably dark spot on the moors for the show.
When you live in Cornwall, it’s easy to get very fussy and spoiled about beaches. Why would you go to a sub-standard one when the Sennens, Pedn Vounders and Gwithians of this world are just a short drive away?
Penzance has a town beach – quite a big one. But no one really talks about it, people don’t tend to hang out on it much and I don’t even know if it has a name (anyone?). I suppose this is because the pebbles are ever so slightly uncomfortable under foot! (You see the snobbery that creeps in).
But I went there yesterday to eat lunch with my cousin visiting from America and she took this gorgeous shot – and it made me reassess. It’s really not a bad beach to have at the end of the road. As a backup, you understand.
I’ve seen these guys busking in Penzance a few times – and it’s always been a huge, mood-enhancing bonus to hear their close harmonies and banjo playing while going about my lunchtime chores.
So, it turned out at the Last Cabaret at the Acorn the other weekend (where I took this vid), that The-banjoing-buskers-from-Causewayhead-and-occasionally-if-drizzly-the- bottom-of-the-stairs-by-Abbey-National are actually a regularly gigging group – called Flats and Sharps.
Ha ha, or at least they were until yesterday. Having only just discovered them in earnest, I felt quite stricken to go on their Facebook page to find this statement posted just yesterday: “Unfortunately, Flats and Sharps as from today are no longer a band. Thank you for all your support.”
All is not lost: two members – Kirk (banjo, vocal, harmonica) and Liam (vocals, guitar) – have formed a yet-to-be-named duo playing a similar mix of bluegrass and country. Hallelujah, I’m ready!
Keep an eye out for them – they are young, funny, and disgracefully confident and talented.
Check out Kirk & Liam’s facebook page for gig dates etc.
Twitter is many things, not all of them 100% productive. I can personally confirm that it is the most spectacular time-waster EVER for self-employed writers. But since entering the world of retweets and 140-character missives, I have made no end of Cornish discoveries. There are so many sole-trading creative types lurking in the coves and crannies of Cornwall and twitter seems to attract them like moths to a flame.
Last week in the Cornish twitter village, I discovered the talented Mat McIvor (http://twitter.com/matmcivor), a Penzance-based artist, t-shirt and poster designer, muralist and blogger (and, judging by his twitter feed from the last few days, acting manager of the Crown pub on Bread Street in PZ?).
Check out Mat’s uplifting, pop art-tinged interpretations of the Cornish coast – the first two are of Newquay and the last one is the view over the rope bridge at Land’s End and out to sea.
Thanks for kindly lending me these rays of sunshine for Monday morning pasties & cream, Mat. See you in the Crown one day?
Mat McIvor blog: http://hardworkwiththekids.blogspot.com/
newquay - image via mat mcivor
land's end rope bridge - image via mat mcivor
Blimey, last night was wild. I went down to the promenade for some wave watching early evening and here’s what I saw.
(Overheard in Coop: the Scillonian came in “virtually on its side”. Doesn’t bear thinking about.)
Check out these daredevils:
When the compere introduced the opening act at the Last Cabaret at the Acorn on Saturday as a rap outfit from west Cornwall, I couldn’t help but brace myself and check the exit leading to the bar was clear (well, come on, on paper it didn’t bode well). I needn’t have worried though because the duo in question clearly started honing their sense of irony in the womb.
“Casio rap duo” Hedluv & Passman deliver deadpan raps and rhymes from the urban underbelly of, er, Redruth. ‘Doin’ it Dreckly’, as fans will know, is their “anthem” – you can buy the T-shirt on their website. The chorus is catchy and it goes like this: Cos we’re doin’ it, yeah, we’re doin’ it dreckly… doin’ it, yeah, we’re doin’ it dreckly… Listen to it on their myspace.
Their act was over too soon for me – the belly laughing was just gathering momentum on my row – and I was left gasping for more of their humorous rhapsodies on life in ‘Druth. Fortunately I have now discovered Hedluv’s blog, The Online Pasty Guide, to sate my appetite – which is a stroke of pasty genius. Here’s the basic remit:
“Welcome to ‘the online pasty guide’ brought to you by hedluv and filled with hints and tips designed to help you avoid the unspeakable pain of having a bad pasty (photographed above). This particular pasty was purchased after 3pm – that was my first mistake, and leads me neatly to my first tip: 3pm is too late to be buying pasties.”
Look out for them.
headluv and passman (www.druth.co.uk).
Don’t forget to join the facebook group ‘Save the Acorn’ for the latest on how to help secure the future of the marvellous venue, which is sadly due to close shortly. Click here for my blog post on this.
via wiki
Two Cornwall-related stories that caught my eye this week.
More sleepers on the sleeper
I haven’t yet banged on about the joys of the sleeper train on this blog, but rest assured it is only a matter of time *friends nod knowingly*. The discovery of the Night Riviera service to London – with its gentle rocking motion, late night bar for a nightcap, and all-round usefulness and romance – was a key moment after I moved to Cornwall. Ok, we’re 300 miles from anywhere but at least I can sleep through it!
More of that later… Like a massive train geek, I was pretty stoked to read this week that more carriages are being added to the sleeper train from Penzance to London on account of demand. Given that local people fought hard to save this service in 2005, it’s a happy ending to know it’s being used. Now all they need to do is make a ticket cheaper than a round-the-world trip…
“Sculptor seeks tin miner to pose nude”
As headlines go, this one’s hard to make up. But ’tis true. The story goes: “Sculptor Tim Shaw is hunting for a Cornish miner with a ‘rugged experienced look’ to pose naked so that he can refine a £90,000 bronze sculpture that will eventually stand outside the Hall for Cornwall.”
The sculptor says: “I thought that if I cast my net far and wide I would find someone different and interesting. The historical images that I have seen at the museum show men with hard expressions in their eyes.”
Miners with their tackle out – could be an interesting new, cliché-free angle on Cornish mining heritage? Full story here.
Have a good weekend!
I like to think I’m a pretty open-minded kind of person when it comes to the arts but even I was a little perplexed this morning when I got the Exchange Gallery‘s summer programme through the post. First thing I spotted was an event taking place this Saturday morning called the Breadman, accompanied by a picture of people with bread on their heads.
OK, fine, I get it: the people have baguettes tied to their heads. I read on… “Tatsumi Orimoto, as Breadman, will dress a dozen assistants with loaves of bread bound with twine around their heads. Starting at The Exchange, the Breadman will lead a tour of tourist sites through the centre of Penzance, stopping for photo opportunities and offering bread to the public.”
It is definitely bizarre but it’s also quite an intriguing photo op. BUT IS IT ART?! Only one way to find out. It starts at 11am on Saturday. See http://www.newlynartgallery.co.uk for more deets. Get your bread on.
I went to a great gig at the Acorn in Penzance last night – it was the launch of Brother & Bones’ new album, supported by up-and-comings Rokshan and Ryan Jones (of the Hitchcock Rules).
Brother & Bones were accompanied by a full string and brass section and the high-emotion, epic sound was – and I’m trying not to say this too lightly – quite reminiscent of Muse. Impressive stuff. Check out their myspace.
I tried to get some footage on my iPhone of their more high-octane songs but it distorted (far too much energy, it seems, for such a small mic) but this sweet acoustic lullaby came out sort of OK for the first half. Sorry must do better!
And here, by polar contrast, is a masterclass in how to make a VERY cool music video of the wilds of west Cornwall – the lead singer Rich of Brother & Bones doing a more slidey guitar thing:
Where oh where would we be without the Penzance Arts Club?
A little while back, the lovely Emily Evans and Harry Gordon-Smith took over the Club (after rumours of a boutique hotel) – located in the instantly memorable old mansion, once the Portuguese embassy, at the bottom of Chapel Street.
I say instantly memorable because, although I only visited Penzance maybe once as a child (for a Kneehigh Theatre production at the Acorn – we have to save it!), the extravagant seaside mansion and its intriguing side entrance etched themselves on my memory.
Let’s be honest, the restaurant situation in Penzance is pretty dire at the moment – I really love a chilli and chorizo pizza and a pint of Otter in the Crown, occasionally get a Curry Corner or Sukothai takeout (both good & friendly) and I stop for a Corona and some tapas at Mackerel Sky now and again but there’s really not much else cooking.
Or at least there wasn’t until the Dining Room at the Penzance Arts Club opened a few weeks back. I made it over last weekend to try it out and it’s brilliant – and *very big cheer* it’s priced with locals in mind. The room is pure shabby chic, with sweet French perfume bottles as mini vases, simple rustic furniture and white tablecloths, and Breon O’Casey paintings on the walls.
Check out the colours in the food – it looks like an abstract art canvas! The chef makes extensive use of Dan the Potager’s salad boxes, which are stuffed with bright, wild greens, and lots of edible flowers.
Bruschetta, giant prawns with aoili and fishcakes were all fantastic – oh, and we met a nicely sticky end with limoncello cake and cream topped with roasted almonds. There are worse ways to go.
Penzance Arts Club, Chapel Street, 01736 363 761/www.penzanceartsclub.co.uk
I’ve been to the Exchange gallery café for lunch about a dozen times (it’s central, quick and all lunches are around the £5 mark – oh and I get to gaze longingly at the hand-made vases, jewellery and books). And every time I’ve been, I’ve found a strawberry part-dipped in black pepper tucked artistically in my salad.
I *love* this touch – particularly good with the Cornish yarg in my ploughman’s this week. I’ve got pretty expectant of this strawberry now – they’d better not go changing the chef.
The Exchange, Princes Street, Penzance, TR18 2NL (www.newlynartgallery.co.uk)
More photos after the hop… Read the rest of this entry »
The 1930s deco lido in Penzance is a great source of inspiration to local photographers and artists – the cool curves, cubist steps, and triangular shapes pointing out into the sea are a pretty extraordinary sight.
To celebrate my first ever swim in the Jubilee Pool – so overdue, it was getting quite embarrassing – I thought I’d post my humble interpretation of this iconic monument. This was the view from my towel as I lay sunbathing at the weekend (before, that is, I was told to stop photographing the architecture due to ‘child protection’).
I lay there for at least an hour thinking that if I could just absorb enough rays, it would defend me against the famously cold temperature of the water. I noted with some concern that over half the people in the pool had some sort of expensive-looking swimming protection, including swimming caps made of wetsuit material.
But I have to say the water really was lovely – fresh but manageable, and considerably warmer than the sea proper (I know this because I swam off Battery Rocks on Friday evening sans suit and it was… challenging). The feeling of swimming in a pool of that size (100 metres long at its longest point!) was invigorating – and the unconventional triangular shape liberates you from boring old up-and-down lengths, and makes it feel more like a wild swim.
This year is the 75th anniversary of Jubilee Pool, and there are celebratory flags flying (below) and historic Read the rest of this entry »
I took this vid of the Grand Prix of the Sea on Saturday in Penzance, a powerboat racing event. As you can see, the shameless seagulls couldn’t believe their luck. Er, sorry I don’t seem to have focused for very long on the actual sporting action there.
To be honest, I found it a bit of a tricky one to get into as a spectactor as the boats were really just dots in the Bay – albeit impressively fast dots. But it was SO nice to see the town make use of its fantastic promenade for once – it’s such an underused feature and, trivia alert, it’s also the only one in Cornwall.
Everyone seemed very happy sunning themselves and knocking back flutes of pink Polgoon bubbly and eating big slices of watermelon. More soon please… Read the rest of this entry »
With the casualties of the recession still very visible in Penzance – every third shopfront seems to be empty at the moment – it was particularly nice to walk down Chapel Street on Friday and spot something new. A rummager’s dream world, Steckfensters has moved from its smaller Bread Street premises into a plum property – in the old Hilton Young gallery.
I had a browse and the stock is pure Penzance: you can expect anything from a handsome ladies’ pale blue Raleigh bike to rails of leather jackets, plants, curios, floral print garden chairs and, most importantly, a pink tutu.
10 Chapel Street, Penzance – open Thur-Sat
In the absence of an official music vid for ‘Into the fire’ by Thirteen Senses on YouTube, I was quite amused to find this Grey’s Anatomy sequence to the tune instead. Apologies for the gross & gory still that comes up before you start the video (and the even grosser snogging scenes)…
It’s catchy, isn’t it? Thirteen Senses formed in a bedroom in Penzance, though they have since flown the Cornish nest and released three albums – and it is oft quoted (in seemingly every article ever written about them, so I didn’t want to be an exception) that they are the only Cornish band to have had a top 20 single (with Thru the Glass).
Check their myspace here.
With the fight to save the Poly in Falmouth just a few months ago (now reopened as the Falmouth Cinema) and the ongoing battle over the harbour, it came as a blow to find out yesterday about yet another struggle: to save the Acorn Arts Centre in Penzance. It will be closing its doors after the summer if it cannot find more funding to become economically viable.
I feel passionately about the Acorn – not only is it an incredibly atmospheric old building, with an unusual and intimate auditorium, but it’s also got some of the best arts programming in Cornwall. It was just the other week that I was raving about seeing the Portico Quartet there (twice) – it was a privilege to see this sort of serious act from just a few metres away, with a nice cold bottle of Corona in hand and twinkling tea lights all around.
It is testament to the importance of such a venue in west Cornwall that within hours of the news breaking, people had started signing petitions, and joining Facebook pages. Let’s hope it works – here are the links to support them (but buying tickets for shows this summer will also help):
Facebook:
Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/theAcorn/
Acorn Arts Centre, Parade Street, Penzance, Cornwall TR18 4BU, http://www.acornartscentre.co.uk
ismay atkins
pasties & cream cornwall blog 
